Mission in S. Africa forced to close

Saturday

Oct 13, 2012 at 9:20 AM

By EMILY WEAVERTimes-News Staff Writer

Shacks set ablaze and leveled during a period of violence and unrest in the Itipini village of South Africa earlier this year has sent the future of the shantytown and the African Medical Mission — a 32-year labor of love and service for missionary Jennifer McConnachie — up in smoke.

McConnachie, formerly of Hendersonville, is now suspending her mission work in the community after threats of more violence were lobbed her way a few months ago.

The African Medical Mission, which pierced through the poverty-stricken land as a ray of hope to thousands in South Africa, has closed.

Earlier this year, conflict stirred between the village, where the Itipini Community Project and African Medical Mission were housed, and Waterfall, a neighboring community of government houses.

Waterfall had accused the village of harboring criminals after a Waterfall resident was killed by someone who Waterfall residents claimed hailed from Itipini.

“There had been some attacks back and forth with some burning of shacks and violence,” McConnachie said.

“We had been working with the municipal government and the Department of Home Affairs to try to resettle the Itipini people in better housing. While I was in the States in April and May of this year, the violence flared up again, and the police and municipality decided to bulldoze the whole community.

People fled, and I gather it was very traumatic.”

The displaced villagers found temporary shelter in a neighboring town hall.

McConnachie formed the nonprofit African Medical Mission with her husband, the late Chris McConnachie, to raise money for the clinic they started for Itipini — a community of 3,000 erected on top of a former garbage heap. (Itipini translates into “dump” in the South African language of Xhosa.) Families in the village lived in shacks constructed from refuse. There was no electricity, no sanitation and no public transportation.

The clinic provided basic medical care — from visits with newborns to checking white cell counts for AIDS patients — and supplemental food to more than 300 families. The community project also offered skills training programs, preschool and after-school care and a community garden.

“Our actual project with all of the activities (we offered) was still intact” after the conflict, McConnachie said. “We decided to carry on with the clinic (and community project) with our people still coming for help, although their homes no longer existed. About a week later, I was called to the local police station, where a mob of about 80 people from the Waterfall community had gathered.

“They were very angry.”

They “accused me of being responsible for the violence by encouraging the Itipini people to stay around to attend the clinic, preschool, feeding program” and other activities, McConnachie said.

Supported by the police, the angry mob and municipal officials ordered McConnachie to shut the project down “or they would come ‘get us,' ” she said.

“I have to say that was the only time in 32 years that I had felt afraid or threatened.

“We consulted our local board of management at an emergency meeting, and we all decided that we were putting staff (14 workers) and children at risk,” McConnachie said.

“There was no choice but to close down the project, so in three days we basically took apart what had taken us 18 years to build up.”

Over the next few months, missionaries continued to help the displaced Itipinians “squashed into the hall” with food, mattresses and blankets for the frigid winter nights.

McConnachie said they continued to pester the government to provide houses for the residents.

“I think they were really regretting what they had done … because the bulldozing of the community had given Itipini such a negative connotation,” she said. “When they tried to put up housing in some other areas where there were already government houses, the local people strongly objected with more violence.”

A new place was finally found for the refugees about six weeks ago. Twenty- eight temporary houses were erected on the site.

McConnachie said they still have enough money to help the Itipini children with daily bread and baby food, but it was decided to close the mission “as it would have been almost impossible to fund raise for a community and project that didn't exist anymore.”

32-year mission

In 1981, McConnachie, originally of England, and her husband, a Scot, left their home in Hendersonville on a mission to help one of the poorest areas of South Africa. After her husband died in 2007, McConnachie stayed on to continue the mission they started. She currently lives in Mthatha, a large town in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, previously the capital of the former Republic of Transkei, one of the ethnic-specific zones of the country's apartheid era.

“My husband was the prime reason we came to Africa,” she said. “He was an orthopedic surgeon, and he realized that if he was to really make a difference to the orthopedic scene here in the Transkei, we would have to stay longer than the short trips that he was making.”

A three-month stay turned into a year, which slowly evolved into a 32-year commitment for McConnachie, now 72 and a grandmother.

“We have always been wonderfully supported by the St. James Episcopal Church in Hendersonville, which has faithfully prayed for us every Sunday for over 30 years,” she said. “We were also taken on as Episcopal missionaries long ago, and without their support, in so many ways, I don't think we would have made it.”

McConnachie is the longest- serving missionary in the Episcopal church and has been a bright light to a community darkened by AIDS and extreme poverty. “All in all, it has been very much a joint effort by so many people, and we have always been backed up by an amazing board here in Hendersonville. We have also had innumerable volunteers who have made an incredible difference to the work that was possible both at Bedford Orthopedic Hospital and Itipini Community (Project),” she said.

“I have really loved working here and feel so privileged to have been able to do the work I loved with the person I loved for so long.

“It will be very hard to leave the Itipini people, many of whom I have known for so long,” she said, but her mission work will continue.

At the end of the year, McConnachie will move to Grahamstown in South Africa's Eastern Cape, where she will live with her son and family and continue working for the Umaria Umama Wethemba monastery. In 2006, the McConnachies were named Officers of the Order of the British Empire in honor of their many years of service.